Bielsk Podlaski is a town in northeastern Poland which had a substantial Jewish presence before World War II. It is located 52 km south of the City of Bialystok.
Founded over 750 years ago, Bielsk Podlaski was originally known as Bielsk. Local rulers granted Jews economic privileges beginning in the late 15th Century, and the town's Jews established a synagogue by 1542. A well known blood libel trial took place in 1564 when a Bielsk Jew, Isaac Borodovka (the bearded one), was falsely accused of making ritual use of a Christian's blood. He was put to death, but then King August intervened to save the Jewish community from further bloodshed. Many Jews left town shortly thereafter.
Bielsk became part of the Russian Empire in 1807 after the partitioning of Poland. In the 1840s, the town was absorbed into Grodno Gubernia, a province of the Russian Pale of Settlement allowing Jewish residency.
In the early part of the 19th Century, the Jews of Bielsk were organized under the communal jurisdiction of the nearby town of Orla. Jews from Bielsk were buried in Orla until a cemetery was established in Bielsk. By 1844, the government required Jews in both towns to adopt family surnames.
During the 19th Century, the railroad arrived in Bielsk and brought substantial population growth, thus causing Bielsk to surpass Orla as a regional center. Jewish population in Bielsk was recorded at 94 in 1816; 298 in 1847; 1,256 in 1861; 3,968 in 1878; and 4,079 in 1897. In the last quarter of the 19th Century, the town's population was over one-half Jewish.
Most of the vital statistics (birth, marriage and death records) for Bielsk's Jewish community disappeared at the time of forced population migrations during World War I. After the war ended, the town became part of Poland once again. Since Poland already had another municipality named Bielsk (near Plock, NW of Warsaw), the "Russian" Bielsk became known as Bielsk Podlaski beginning about 1920. Between the World Wars, the town contained about 2,500 Jews.
As the Holocaust engulfed Bielsk in mid-1941, the occupying forces created a ghetto in the town and began to shoot Jews. During November 2-11, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated; the Nazis murdered 200 old and sick people at the Jewish cemetery and sent the remaining 7,000+ Jews (including refugees from nearby communities) directly to the Treblinka death camp. Some individuals disassembled the large wood synagogue, Yefeh Einayim, originally built in 1898, for building materials and fuel. None of the three other synagogue buildings survived the war. Additionally, most of the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery were removed. In 1946-47, returning Jewish survivors reburied the Bielsk dead who had perished in town prior to liquidation of the ghetto.
The Jewish cemetery, located on Bransk Road behind the gas station, now has about 15 gravestones with readable names. The Orla cemetery has a similar number of such stones.
In 1999, Bielsk Podlaski, along with the City of Bialystok, became part of the newly-created Wojwództwo (Province of) Podlaskie. Bielsk's population now exceeds 27,500.
The purpose of this web site, initiated and designed by Andrew Blumberg, is to preserve the legacy of the Jewish community of Bielsk Podlaski and to connect people together who have a common origin from this place. We hope you enjoy learning more about our ancestral town.
Mark W. Gordon, Maplewood, NJ | February 6, 2003
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